Friday Evening
August 25, 1967
- School is officially in session, and Abby follows Mother Barker over hill and dale (okay, more like through field and cemetery), learning at her hip as they move along.
- Mother Barker warns Abby that the "educated doctors" won't be able to help people much longer—their practices are getting too far removed from nature—so people will come running Abby's way, especially men, since Mother Barker says they get all kinds of sick.
- Abby spends time with Mother Barker, learning remedies and watching her work, and after three weeks, Abby helps her own patient. Yay.
- Mother Barker tells Abby to turn the house into a Healing House after she dies, and while Abby's all like, oh, you won't die, Mother Barker basically tells her to hush, says she's like a daughter to her, and insists the house belongs to Abby after she and the foreman bite it.
- The house is filled with roots, there's an amazing garden outside, and Abby knows what to do with all of it.
- Mother Barker tells Abby she is "an arrow in the bow of a benevolent wind," and that night Abby dreams of light and waterfalls and music, particularly a girl singing.